Printers and ink are like razors and blades - basing your purchasing decision on the up-front cost of the printer ignores the long-term cost and thus masks the true cost of a given printer.

This is not to say that cash flow is an unreasonable factor in making a purchase. If money is tight and you have the need, it makes sense to spend as little as possible. My advice is simply to do it with your eyes open.

The factors to consider are:

• Initial cost of the printer
• Cost of ink or toner cartridges
• Yield of cartridges
• Cost of other printer expendables
• Cost of paper

Most vendors are forthcoming with an estimated yield for their ink and toner cartridges. I give credit to HP for leading in this regard today (as opposed to the past), with estimates plainly stated for every cartridge. I do not suggest that any of the estimates are perfect and all vendors probably try to cast the best light, but I have found HP's estimates to be relatively accurate. That means if the estimate for one printer's cartridges is a bit generous, the estimate for another printer's cartridges is generous by the same percentage and that means the relationship between the analyzed costs of one printer over the other will hold.

Some printers have user-serviceable parts other than ink or toner cartridges that must be replaced periodically. These parts must also be factored in to a proper analysis. In my examples below, I will only discuss HP printers that do not have such additional parts.

For color printing, the cost of paper is negligible, usually 1¢ or less. Because it is such a tiny factor and the same regardless of printer, I omit it here.

Performing the Analysis

Any analysis like this requires considering total costs over time. The key is understanding how much must be spent on printer consumables, which depends upon the life of the printer and amount of printing performed. For the analyses that follows:

• Life of Printer - 4 years
• Print Volume - 500 impressions per month (roughly one ream of paper)

You'll notice that I have used the term "impressions" rather than "sheets." For single-side printing impressions and sheets are the same. For double-sided printing, only one piece of paper is consumed but the printer makes two impressions, one per side.

For color printing, the analysis is complicated because the color cartridges usually have a different life than the black cartridge. For example, the $300 HP CP2015's color cartridges yield 1,400 impressions while the black cartridges yield 2,200 impressions. I deal with this by calculating the cost of ink/toner per impression, calculating a total cost per impression, and using that to calculate the long-term costs. This means the analysis will probably be based on a fractional cartrige at some point, but taken over several years the effect should not be significant.

Keep in mind that each cartridge contributes to each impression. A set of the three colors (cyan, magenta, yellow), each yielding 1,400 impressions, yields a total of 1,400 impressions, not 3 x 1,400.

The calculation of yield is thus the cost of the cartridge divided by the number of impressions per cartridge. For example, the color cartridges for an HP CP2015 lists for $72 each with a yield of 1,400 impressions and a cost per impression of 5.14¢.

The black cartridge for the HP CP2015 is $77 with a yield of 2,200 and a cost per of 4¢. The cost for a color impression on this printer is thus 19¢ - 5¢ each for the 3 color cartridges and 4¢ for the black cartridge.

Once the ink/toner cost per impression is known, the rest of the analysis is easy. I usually give my clients a jolting number, the cost of ink/toner per year. You'll understand the jolt in a moment. Then I calculate total cost of ownership. TCO is the key to understanding a printer purchase. I most often calculate the total cost of the printer over its life (purchase cost plus consumables) and then calculate yearly and monthly TCO amounts.

Some Examples

Let's look at four printers at various points on the price curve. The printers I have chosen all include automatic duplex (double-sided) printing and an integrated Ethernet (LAN) connection because I always buy those features myself and recommend them to all clients.

Remember - 4 years life, 500 impressions per month. Also keep in mind that the printers tend to get faster with price, with the 4525 capable of 42 pages per minute, and that there may be other features as you go up the food chain.

Quite an eye-opener, don't you think? The jolting number in the tables here is the cost of toner for one year for the CP2025 - it's almost twice the cost of the printer!

What this basic analysis makes clear is that spending more up front reduces the long-term costs. For total dollars spent, the CP4025dn is the best deal at $800 less than the CP2025dn or about $18 per month less. But you will have to pony up much more on day one and cartridges are more expensive.

From a cash flow perspective, there is another consideration. Even though the long-term costs of the CP2025dn are not attractive, the costs are spead out a bit. The printer is cheap on day one and a complete set of cartridges costs $486. You'll buy cartridges at least twice as often compared to the other printers but those require an outlay of about $1,000 for each complete set. So even though you'll spend more dollars for the CP2025dn over its life, you might find it more affordable on a day-to-day basis.

I want to warn you that the number of impressions can radically alter your opinion of the costs. At 500 impressions per month, the TCO of the 2025 is $800 more than the 4025, which you might find tolerable. But change the number of impressions to 2,000 per month and that difference jumps to $5,700 - $16,319 for the 2025 and $10,572 for the 4025. Over four years, the 4025 will save over $1,400 per year.

Finally, your analysis should consider just how much color printing is actually going to be done. All these printers only use black toner when printing black & white material, so the cost per impression is from 4¢ to 1¢. If the bulk of the printing is B&W, consider buying a good B&W laser printer with an attractive TCO because black toner is always less expensive per impression than color toner. Then buy a modest color printer that is used exclusively when color is required. In my own work, I only print color when it is essential to presentation, about 1% of the time. I never print color for file or reference copy.

Conducting a thorough TCO analysis for every printer you consider can make a huge difference in your costs. It's worth the time and effort.